ALGERIA • 91′ a film by MERZAK ALLOUACHE Algiers. An overcrowded city, with its endless traffic jams, its chaotic crowd, its rundown buildings, its old apartments piled up with families trying to survive… In this suffocating city, the terraces, progressively transformed into living spaces, they too, over time, become effervescent spaces where smiles cross the[…]
MOZAMBIQUE • 86′ a movie by LICINIO AZEVEDO Mozambique, 1975. After 500 years of Portuguese colonization, Mozambicans hoist their flag for the first time. Those who fought for independence are in power and apply their revolutionary ideals. Prostitutes must be “reeducated” and transformed into “new women” to serve revolution. Hundred of women, prostitutes or presumed prostitutes,[…]
CONGO/BELGIUM • 116′ a movie by RAOUL PECK Patrice Lumumba, the hero of Congolese independence, was not yet 30 when the first tremors of botched decolonisation thrust him to the forefront of the international political area. After a course of a few years, Lumumba, became the most reviled man of this intense cold war period. Becoming[…]
BELGIUM • 97′ a film by PIERRE PAUL RENDERS Thomas, 32, suffers from acute agoraphobia. For eight years, he’s lived a reclusive life that no one is allowed to enter. He only communicates with the outside world via his computer screen. The management of his life has been entrusted to Globale, an insurance company who[…]
CAMBODIA • 115′ a film by RITHY PANH August 1992. Savannah, 28 years old, finds himself back in Phnom Penh after four years on Cambodia’s northern front, fighting the Khmer Rouge. Like the rest of his generation, he’s known only war since infancy, camps, hunger and massacres. All he’s got left now is his uncle, Sôn,[…]
SPAIN/FRANCE • 126′ a film by MARC RECHA The story could be told from several points of view. There’s Perroquet, a pesky parrot who witnessed the premature demise of his owner, Madame Catherine, due to her excessive lifestyle. The bird was also around to see Eric, the mechanic, bury her on the sly. The trains that[…]
SPAIN • 108′ a film by MARC RECHA While visiting his mother, Pau takes a phone call: his brother long disappeared, has committed suicide. Pau and his mother, who is unaware of what exactly happened, set out for the small Pyrenean village where Alex had lived before he took his own life. A journey down their[…]
GUINEA BISSAU • 93′ a film by SANA NA N’HADA Xime, 1962. Iala is confronted with losing the authority over his two sons. Raul, the elder son, had been sent to the seminary. In fact, he joined the liberation movement against the Portuguese colonial regime. Bedan, the younger son, remaining behind the village, is in[…]
CAMBODIA • 130′ a film by RITHY PANH It is the story of Vong Poeuv, his wife Yim Om and their seven daughters. Their lives, their joys, thier beliefs and their survival are dictated by rice growing. The plot of land is small, the family numerous, the children are growing up. The harmony is fragile.[…]
FRANCE/TAÏWAN • 141′ a film by TSAï MING-LIANG A Taiwanese filmmaker makes a film based on the myth of Salomé at the Louvre. Even though he speaks neither French nor English, he insists on giving the part of King Herod to the French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. To give the film a chance at the box-office,[…]